Beauty is inherently political.

In her discourse, Sharon Lee discusses how social media has created new visual economies that have resulted in a new interest in Korean pop culture as well as increased focus on Korean bodies and plastic surgery. Lee begins by introducing the popularized song Gangnam Style by Psy, which has shown to be pivotal in further introducing k-pop to the western world. K-pop is notorious for being concentrated on the visual whether it be bright colors or the prevalence of “flawless” pop stars. In fact, Koreans consume plastic surgery at the highest rates per capita globally. Through the increased American interest in Korean culture that Psy has paved the way for, came a viral gif that compressed images of Miss Korea beauty contestants’ faces morphing one into the next. The message of this gif was that all of them look the same, in other words, an emergence of extreme racialized uniformity. This gif was eventually found to be photoshopped, therefore, more indicative of American women’s obsession with Korean plastic surgery and Korean bodies than the epidemic of mass plastic surgery taking place. Jezebel, a blog curated towards women and the promotion of global feminism, found this gif especially intriguing and despicable. Jezebel’s article characterized Korean plastic surgery to be rooted in a desire to appear more western and white. In “Plastic Surgery Means Many Beauty Queens but Only One Kind of Face,” Dodai Steward claims that the uniformity seen in Korean beauty contestants is no different than the uniformity seen in American pop culture icons such as Britney Spears and Taylor Swift. Blogger Carlotta79 disagrees. She comments : “…each [American] woman is still very individual with distinctive features when you compare them. I can’t say the same of the sampling of Korean women shown here.” (Lee 8) Here, one can see white personhood in action, categorizing non-white persons as the “other,” hence, undercutting their sense of individuality.

Korean plastic surgery was kick-started after the Korean War. In an effort to solidify public relations between Koreans and Americans, the double eyelid surgery was made available to the masses when US military doctors would perform the cosmetic surgery along with the free operations on Korean War victims. Korean feminists state that “lookism” is the prevailing reasons that plastic surgery is so heavily consumed. It is considered normal for many Korean women to undergo surgery to stand out in pictures on job and university applications. As the role of a woman in a society has moved beyond child bearing and raising and into the spheres of career and social networks, women’s bodies have been commoditized even more into objects. Now the body is scene as a tool to raise one’s social and financial status and improve one’s lifestyle. In the age of neoliberalism, the solution presented to confront the plastic surgery epidemic is self-love. However, self-love conflates with the idea of self-care, which includes plastic surgery. Self-love asserts that loving your body is “the individual agency necessary to eschew cosmetic surgery…when paradoxically, plastic surgery as a field has historically used the acquisition of self-esteem to justify its existence as a medical science.” (Lee 22)

The theme that stood the most to me in this article was the idea of “lookism” and how its hierarchy seems nearly impossible to escape. In Dodai Stewart’s article “I Can’t Stop Looking at These Korean Women Who’ve Had Plastic Surgery”, she asks “If you have limited ability to see beauty in someone who is not bigeyed and small-faced and straight-nosed, do you also have a limited ability to understand, empathize, sympathize and relate to that person, as well? Do you become intolerant of those who don’t meet your lookist standards?” This quote has already engrained itself in me. I had never looked at beauty in the light of empathy before. However, this quote shifts the blame for the domination of lookism onto young Korean women. This frames Korean women as conformist dupes by using the pronouns “you” and “your.” Studies have proven that humans are addicted to beauty in the same way that an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol. Therefore, beauty is actually counterproductive as it is a distraction from more constructive and humane components of life and well-being. The power of lookism is what drives women to discipline and carefully monitor their relationships to their body. Being un-beautiful is a synonym to being lazy and incapable. People deemed unattractive are discriminated against in the workplace and in terms of relationships. Therefore the pressure to get plastic surgery is rooted in the pressure to find an attractive and successful spouse and a sustainable and well-paying job. It is not until society decides to collectively fight the oppression of lookism that the appeal to plastic surgery will lessen, and this is unlikely to occur since humans are proven to be addicted to beauty.

4 thoughts on “Beauty Between Empires: Global Feminism, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem”

I also found Lee’s interpretation of Korean beauty standards through the judgmental eye of the United States as very telling of the sort of ideology that is harbored in the United States. As she makes evident, the U.S. is a narcissistic nation, founding itself on degradation of others in order to ensure that its “self esteem” is kept intact. What this means for Korean women is that they are scrutinized under the same individualist/feminist lens that is used to scrutinize women who don the hijab, categorizing these individuals as backwards and oppressed. This, in turn, provides white women with the opportunity to seem as technologically and socially advanced, as well as able to cultivate their own individual identities, apart from the masses of Britney Spears and Taylor Swift look a-likes that have amassed over the past 25 years. The fact of the matter is: American ideologies are no different from that of Korea in their beauty practices, however, Korean women are viewed as participating in surgeries to an excess amount, painting them as lacking in self control. Simultaneously, the U.S. views women in Kabul as lacking in self control as well, portraying women who wear the hijab as oppressed and lacking freedom. It seems as though unless you are an American, you fail to be seen as an individual with agency. This is all done in order for the United States to feel as though it is in control, weeding out any nations that may pose a threat as a soft power. By portraying Korea as a failed version of America, assuming that their beauty practices are efforts to seem “white passing” rather than acknowledging the fact that America has lost many of its appeals as a result of globalization and transnationalist movements. – Gaby Bruce

I am so intrigued by your mention of the study showing that humans are “addicted” to beauty. I am just wondering: why does is seem that we are only addicted to such a superficial/external form of beauty? Like you mentioned, when a woman is not beautiful, she is deemed lazy and incapable, but what if she has “beautiful” qualities? What if her personality is compassionate, empowered, determined, etc? It is rather interesting that as humans, we fail to truly acquaint ourselves with “internal beauty” because who knows, perhaps if we did we would become addicted to this as well. I think that part of the reason women face so much pressure to undergo cosmetic procedures is the frequently held notion that their bodies are objects. In this sense, the appearance of the body becomes the most important aspect in determining one’s status, value, position, importance, and therefore, quality of life. I can’t help but wonder if the oppressive force of lookism can ever truly be fought. The sense of agency that women experience when they choose to undergo their cosmetic procedures is a false sense of power. Even though the women are making the decisions to alter themselves, these decision have already been made for them by other, more powerful political and cultural forces. Therefore, the facade of agency masks the ability to recognize any oppression. So, women continue altering themselves which only fuels our addiction to (external) beauty…

I find it fascinating that as Korean women progress in job industries and the workplace and move away from strictly running the home and/or caring for the children, they are subjected to specific and frequently unattainable “ideal” beauty standards to such an extreme extent that a high number of them undergo the pain and suffering of plastic surgery. I am glad that you mentioned this detail from Professor Lee’s article in your post, because to me, such a practice as this signifies one step forward in societal modernization and ten steps backwards. It would be ironic to claim that women in Korea are treated as equals to men because of their seemingly newfound presence in the workplace setting. To me, learning through the reading that Korean women have had a history of undergoing procedures in order to further their careers was not only troubling, but also greatly saddening. To think that many of the women in Korea who just want to have noteworthy jobs go through plastic surgery procedures simply to better their chances for being hired, employed, or promoted is a harsh reality. Finally, in an age in which it seems as though life revolves around the internet and various media outlets, the visual economies of Korea only feed into these vicious standards of beauty. What would seem like unrelated economies (such as K-pop) actually become highly influential in multiple aspects of Korean life and culture, as Professor Lee makes clear.

“Lookism” as a hierarchy within a system of power that identifies individuals as worthy subjects of empathy is certainly a compelling argument, especially in the context of Lee’s article which cites the difficulty of getting a job or accepted to a university without the right look to be one of the primary reasons for the high rates of plastic surgery in South Korea. However, lookism shouldn’t be made the justification for the condemnation of beauty as a counterproductive distraction. Beauty work is also productive in creating social spaces, especially valuable as beauty salons in immigrant communities in the states where minorities can feel like they belong. Beauty can also be a source of subversive empowerment in individuals who embrace aspects of themselves and their identities that do not conform to normative ideas of gender and sexuality.

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